


before they are hanged

by andromedaas



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, caity you're welcome, girl gang fic is back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:28:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27891550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromedaas/pseuds/andromedaas
Summary: The door to the cottage opens in front of her, and since she left the Spellman Household earlier that day, Lilith let’s out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. She aches with the loss of Eve and Zelda at her side.(Zelda pushing her up against the wall in the foyer before she left, kneeling and raising one of Lilith’s legs over her shoulder and I need to pay tribute to my goddess in that low, husky voice)But there’s familiar blue eyes in front of her and, hell below, her hair is down and she’s wearing nothing but a robe and her glasses with a steaming mug of coffee clutched between her hands and Liltih’s mind goes blank.
Relationships: Eve/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith/Original Mary Wardwell, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	before they are hanged

**Author's Note:**

> I used to be khionyx and then I had a crisis and deleted my account anyways girl gang is back (for caity and by part for me bc this is the ONE fic I've written that I've liked)
> 
> (big shout out to caity, yes principal wardwell, and candace)

“Do you miss it?”

Lilith twisted in Samael’s arms. "Miss what?”

“The garden?”

Lilith stiffened and then forced herself to relax. She remembers the garden, the lush greenery filled with curios and wonders, she remembers the sweetness of the fruit and the wind on her face. She remembers Adam and his kindness, at first, and then anger later.

She remembers Eve.

“I don’t.”

-

_Eve doesn’t smile anymore,_ Lilith thinks, a little bitter, a little joyful.

There’s no light in her eyes when she ascends from darkness. Eve is beautiful still, always will be, but her hair is getting darker, her expression harder to define. Lilith doesn’t know what to do and spring gets colder.

Lilith doesn’t know the difference between Eve’s garden and her garden anymore. She stares at the stars and wonders if they’re nothing more than gems Adam placed there for her, for Eve. She doesn’t remember if it’s always been that way or if Adam did it after she left, it doesn’t seem important. Her smile becomes harsh, her mouth always hungry. Lilith wonders if Eve is as voracious as she is.

(she soon realises Eve isn’t)

Lilith has a hunger of her own.

Lilith opens her eyes to see the sun, warm and welcoming, at the end of an afternoon. She wonders what would happen to Adam, to Eve, if she opened the heavens and stole the sun. She doesn’t smile, except she isn’t bored either. The leaves are changing. Summer is close to an end.

-

It was the first time that Eve wasn’t lounging in the garden when Lilith sneaks in. The crack in the False Gods earth was hollow and colourless, without any shades of dark blue or grey. Lilith doesn’t look back, at Eve, as she walked down the steps away from the garden. She could feel winter grow in front of her until the ground swallowed the loophole.

Lilith is used to darkness by now; her eyes find it a pleasant experience after months and months exposed to the strong sun. The dark can be very kind once in a while and, unlike the belief of Adam and Eve, Hell is neither cold nor warm. Lilith isn’t sure if it’s something in between, but she thinks it could be.

Her dress has tiny glimpses of light. She made it of shadows and clouds, collecting stars to match her thoughts. She thinks at how Eve wouldn’t like it, claim the dress was too black and blue, despite the weak shine it has when Lilith moves. She wasn’t expecting Eve to understand. There, in Hell, she became life. As Lilith walked, the dead turned their heads to watch her.

-

“You’ve been to the garden again.” His voice is flat, cold, devoid of emotion. Lilith meets his gaze, raises her chin in defiance.

“I thought I was free to do as I wish,” she stated. “I will not escape one cage to find myself locked in another one. I will not be bought and sold by a man. I will not have moments of my time valued in fractions of freedom by someone other than myself.”

Lucifer scoffs. “You owe me, dear Lilith.”

Lilith grinds her teeth. They know nothing. _He_ knows nothing. Without her, he is nothing. Perhaps she would refuse him her hand out of spite, for the one thing on this forsaken planet her cannot reach. She healed him, she saved him, and now he prances around Hell as if it is his kingdom because he was an angel.

(inside, her hate strikes like a thunderbolt; she cannot show it, she cannot help it either, nor does she want to)

There is no sun, no moon, but there is light. Sourceless and near-solid but light none the less. Sometimes she raises a finger, as if to touch it, meeting cool air instead. The perpetual chill does not bother her as much as she had feared, it reminds her of the early spring days in the garden, of the tranquil humidity after a messy storm, the cold taste in her filling lungs. The ozone hanging in the air, coating her tongue.

-

“Lilith,” Eve reached out to brush a hand against her cheekbone. “Where did you go?”

Lilith leaned into the touch, instinctively, into the soft sweetness that was Eve. The endless curves and sad smile. Perhaps because they rarely feel the need of any other’s company but their own, or seek it. Perhaps because she is too wrapped up in the aftermath of feeding Eve the apple to notice or care, perhaps it is both.

Eve is nibbling at her ear with her teeth, she has learned that Lilith relishes the sensation, and Lilith catches her with her guard lowered. She raises from her sweet scented neck and just looks at her, just looks, the slightest crisp on her forehead.

Lilith stares back, eyes unreadable, still as Eve only sees her. “What do you need, my queen?” And those words, that voice, Lilith _trembles_ , aching in languages she cannot understand.

“You,” she responds, voice hoarse.

Eve grins, filled with teeth and terror and slowly, agonisingly slowly, makes her way to the apex between Lilith’s thighs.

There are stars in the skies, and there are stars in Eve’s eyes, and they burst in tiny supernovas behind Lilith’s eyelids.

Lilith touches the gentle flowers growing around them in the garden. Adam hasn’t come looking for Eve yet so she tests fate, pushes her time in the garden just a little longer. Eve is a siren, a call she cannot escape, something haunting and beautiful that makes Lilith yearn in tongues she’s never heard.

“Are you sure you didn’t come out of the sea?” She asks.

Eve laughs, it’s light and breathtaking and Lilith’s heart stops a little bit. “I was made from Adam’s rib. Not the sea, your eyes are from the sea.”

 _I was made from the same clay as Adam_ , Lilith wants to say. _And he saw equality as a threat_. She doesn’t though, she swallows her response down. “I think you’re a foundling,” she says instead. “I think you walked out of the ocean, a gift from Poseidon. Or maybe you’re a siren.”

“I can’t sing,” Eve states.

“So you claim. Until you learn, and lure men to their deaths.” _And lure me to my death_.

Eve wiggles out of her grip, all soft skin and gentle curves. She stands, hands on her hips and head cocked. She has the smirk of someone who knows better. “I can whistle.”

Lilith barks out a laugh. Eve, _her Eve_ , who is so _so_ so beautiful. “There you have it. A whistling siren. Then go, in search of your tune, and never come back.”

There’s something forbidden in Eve. Something ethereal that Lilith cannot name, she’s tasted it on her tongue, heard it in Eve’s low moans and sweet sighs. Eve is a shiny new thing, young and unbroken.

And Lilith,

Lilith has _always_ been drawn to shiny things.

-

“What was Adam like?” Eve asks.

Lilith sighs, she knew this day would be coming. “Do you truly want that answer, little rib creature?” Eve nods, trails wet kisses down Lilith’s neck. “He didn’t know how to touch me. I knew this, and I understood. He never want an equal, he wanted me to submit to him, to kneel and worship at his feet. I understood, and it was so much better when I touched myself.”

Eve learned that the world was harsh, and cold, and unforgiving. She learned that it was full of secrets that Adam would never share.

“He calls you night creature, night monster.”

Lilith chokes on her own breath.

“He says you deserved to walk away, you were not worthy of him.” Eve’s voice is gentle, like the soft breezes through the night and her magic swells around them, a cacophony of sounds raging like a storm in Lilith’s mind.

Lilith sucks in a breath as Eve pauses.

“He’s wrong about you.” Eve waves her hand and plants bloom beneath them, bright orange lilies and violet irises from the rainforest, sagebrush and fescues from the scablands, mosses older than Lilith herself grew beneath her feet. “He asked you to wait on him, and in return you asked him for respect. He gave you nothing so you gave nothing in return. He claims that you are a demon but you are not, you look like me, talk like me. If you’re a demon does that make me a demon too?”

Lilith took Eve’s face in her hands, cupped her cheeks, ran her thumbs across the freckles that burned like constellations, branded into her palms. “Oh no, no little rib. You’re not a demon. You’re nothing like me.”

Eve opens her mouth, as if to protest, claim that _we are two of the same, same coin, different sides_ but Lilith couldn’t deal with that, not with mortal claims of love. Instead she brings her mouth down to rest against Eve’s and _swallows_ her.

And Eve…

 _Eve_ swallows back, as fierce as the moon in the sky and as free as a comet.

-

“I could stop,” Lilith whispers in Eve’s hair, her breath warm against skin. “If you are content with his embrace, if you don’t crave knowledge, I could stop little rib. Now.”

“Don’t stop. _Lilit please_.”

-

The tree of life stood next to the tree of knowledge. Eve knew she was forbidden from eating either.

(Lilith knew she craved both)

The knowledge was unguarded, and Eve often sat with her back against the trunk with her hands in the rich soil. _Tell me a story, Lilith_ she’d say. _Tell me about life outside the garden._

And Lilith would. She’d speak of demons and monsters and a man without wings. She’d pick the apples and offer them to Eve. She always declined.

The tree of life was guarded, protected from them with the False Gods own creations. Lilith learned early, tempted by the juicy pomegranates, that the cherubs have sharp teeth.

-

Afterwards, Eve blames her.

It wasn’t a lie, really, because she was there, and she had encouraged her. It was possible that she had arranged the entire thing. But, truthfully, it was not her urging that made Eve’s lips part uncertainly and her teeth sliced not the skin of the fruit.

The fruit was tart, and sweet, and bitter. Lilith knew this. She knew it was hot and bland and cool. She watched Eve, watched as her face morphed into disgust, then melted away into divine bliss. Eve grinned, and there were pomegranate seeds stuck in her teeth. The juice ran down her chin and over her throat, splashing on her breasts and Lilith wants to sink her teeth into Eve and _devour_ her. It coated her fingers. It dropped between their meshed bodies, sticky on skin and tangled hair.

The first tentative nibble became a bite, became a frenzied rush beyond restraint. There was no savouring, no dwelling, just a desperate need to consume, to devour, to know. 

(Lilith understood that, understood it every second she spend in the garden with Eve)

There was seeds and skin and stalk passing between their lips and Eve holds the pomegranate out to Lilith. There’s a transformation taking place on her face. Eve knew. Her fingers gripped Lilith tightly, the pomegranate forgotten on the ground next to them, she’s sure and purposeful, demanding and aflame. Eve’s mouth drops to the curve of Lilith’s throat and licks the sticky sweet juice from her warm skin.

It tastes like _goodbye_.

-

The next time she saw Eve, she was different, Eve was different. She seemed to have aged a millennia and yet not at all. Lilith watched as she followed Adam across the desert, across the dune sea to a different life outside the garden.

Adam’s dutiful wife. Adam’s dutiful servant.

The silver now dulled.

Lilith took a breath, and then another. Of course Eve changed, of course those moments in the garden vanished as duty took over.

Her little rib creature.

She closed her eyes, if Eve could change, so could Lilith.

(behind her, the Garden of Eden crumbled and Lilith stood in it’s waste clutching at the dying blooms of Eve’s flowers, salt creating rivers down her cheeks)

-

It was easy to become darker, to watch the world create herself around her. Samael doesn’t talk to her anymore, Lucifer abandoned her for his own passions, creating his witches, his monsters. She runs her fingers over the scars across her back, the lashes she earned fighting tooth and nail, they race through her like lightning. She counts the bruises blossoming across her ribs, in various stages of healing. She breaks her fingers one by one to prove her _devotion_ to the man she thought she knew.

She digs her graves and buries her children, watches as the False God rages across the sky. She digs her graves and remembers, remembers Eve’s skin against hers and Eve’s lips tracing the angles of her body.

She remembers how Eve tastes, sweet and salty and bitter all at once, like home.

Instead she raises demons, monsters, man-eaters. She remembers finding Cain over Abel’s body, the rock in his hand. She remembers looking into his eyes and seeing Eve, remembers telling him to run.

(she remembers how Abel tasted when she cracked open his bones and sucked out his marrow, remembered how it was not like Eve)

Lilith learns to bury her emotions. She learns the world is cruel, no matter what she had done, no matter her reputation. She learns two things to be absolute truths: loneliness is not a self-inflicted fate, but a chosen one. All love is nothing but a well-shrouded lie.

If she moves, mountains will fall.

If she does not, she will.

 _Do you miss the garden?_ Samael asks on the rare occurrences he speaks to her.

 _No_ Lilith responds. Samael looks at her like he knows she’s lying.

 _Do you miss her?_ He asks again.

Lilith bares her teeth at him.

Adam called her night-creature, night-monster. The demons call her Demoness, Mother of Demons, Madam Satan. She’s the mother to sleep, death, and darkness. And Eve, Eve called her _Lilit_.

They call her the night so the night she becomes. Her hair gets longer, darker. She melts into the shadows around her.

(she keeps her eyes though, Eve always loved her eyes)

-

_She didn’t know how she ended up at this party, didn’t know why she was standing on the balcony, staring across the city._

She missed Eve.

“Oh.”

Lilith turns. There’s a witch there, newly baptised and _drenched_ in power.

“Sorry,” that voice again, low and husky and several packs of cigarettes a day. “I didn’t know anyone else was out here.” She makes to leave.

“No,” Lilith holds up her hand. “You can stay.”

The witch nods gratefully in her direction and lights a cigarette. “Thank you.”

“I’m…” Lilith pauses, thinks for a fleeting second about pomegranates and seeds and soft curves. “Eve.”

“Zelda.”

_-_

The witch had hair the colour of fire and eyes the colour of the forest. She moves around the room, smelling like nicotine and cloves and death. She prowls around the room with a cigarette between two fingers and a tumbler of whiskey in the other. Her name rolls off of Lilith’s tongue like silky shadows, inky and thick and intoxicating.

_Zelda Phiona Spellman._

Lilith wonders what Zelda tastes like. If the smell of cloves and nicotine and death mimicked the inside of her mouth, of her skin.

She wonders if, when she cracks open Zelda’s bones if she’d taste bitter like Abel, if her cunt was as sweet as Eve’s, if her mouth was as wanting as Cain’s was.

(she hoped that Zelda didn’t taste like Adam)

-

In a perfect world, Eve eats the pomegranate. Eve finds the tree and eats the pomegranate and leaves with Lilith before any god can call them unholy, can make them into a sin. In a perfect world they build their own garden. One unlike Eden, one with stone pathways and benches and fountains and dark corners where Lilith would push Eve up against the cool brick wall and taste her.

In her dreams, Lilith finds Eve here. Eve with her hands on her hips and her head cocked. Eve with pomegranate juice dripping down her chin, face pointed towards the heavens in rapture. In her dreams Eve is hers and hers and hers and Lilith is free. Eve came into this world with her fists swinging.

In her nightmares it’s worse. In her nightmares she finds Eve’s body twisted into a circle, Adam standing over her laughing _how foolish of you to think that someone would ever love you_. In her nightmares Eve’s eyes and fingernails are ripped out, every bone in her body crushed. Adam didn’t just kill her, he made her suffer. It’s _devastating_. It’s ripping her apart.

(Lilith wakes up, scrambling towards the bathroom, retching despite there being nothing in her stomach)

Drinking away her problems never helped solve them, but it helped numb them.

-

It’s a blurry mess of nights. Paris. London. Glasgow. New York. She follows Zelda around the world, addicted to the husk of her voice and the sweetness that lies between her thighs. They’ve both suffered sentences, both did their time to unholy gods. In Hell, Lilith was life. The demons, the dead, they all turned and watched her. The plague kings bowed before her as she seated herself beside Lucifer. Samael feared her now, now that she was night herself. Before Zelda, she was death, darkness, strife. Before Zelda she is misery and blame, retribution and madness, she was the fates of death and the pleasure of love.

Lilith wanted a storm to match her rage, and she found one in Zelda.

-

In this life, Lilith is a painted lady, lipstick on her mouth and polish on her nails. Now, the lipstick is smeared across Zelda’s breasts and down her thighs, her nails clipped short and smooth so that when her fingers slide _just like that_ between Zelda’s legs, there is no pain. The pain is saved for later, when Lilith bends to place her mouth over her fingers and tease her with her tongue to cries of _oh, oh, just right, right there, please Eve please_ , spreads Zelda’s legs wide and hunkers between them and _bites_.

Zelda’s lipstick is red as blood and tastes like pomegranates and there’s a wry twist to her lips that says she’s seen it all and done it all. Her mouth is sweeter than sin and her tongue is pointed and clever and wicked as a serpent and Lilith cannot refuse her.

(Lilith cannot stop thinking about how unlike Eve, Zelda is)

Zelda doesn’t taste like Eve did. Her mouth tastes like nicotine and cloves and the freedom of the open sky and Lilith. She doesn’t sound like Eve did either. Zelda isn’t quiet in her pleasure, she’s loud and pulsing with a fist clenched in Lilith’s hair and her thighs clutching Lilith’s head. She let’s out shuddering gasps when Lilith circles her clit with her tongue and deep ruthless moans when Lilith nips at her folds. Zelda’s cunt isn’t as sweet as Eve’s, it’s addicting none the less, an aged merlot that Lilith gets drunk on every night.

And Lilith…

Lilith buries the thoughts of how Zelda feels wrong, all harsh beneath her hands and runs the tip of her tongue up Zelda’s slick folds. She takes a moment fo savour it, the slick wet tastes of one of _his_ witches, his most prized creation in her mouth. Savours the helpless jerk of Zelda’s hips when she stops. Savours Zelda’s thighs tightening around her head.

Lilith can taste the power of that Zelda holds, the magic embedded into her bones. She wonders if the Spellman’s are descendants of Cain, if they have Eve’s blood in their veins. She wonders if Zelda can make the desert grow like Eve did, the mosses and sorrels sprouting beneath her feet as she walks barefoot through the woods.

She pulls away from Zelda’s cunt and dives into the depths of her mouth, chasing the lingering taste of magic that bursts like supernovas on her tongue. She trails hot, open-mouth kisses along Zelda’s neck, lingering at her collarbones.

The Spellman family is powerful, this she knows to be true, she’s tasted it on Zelda’s lips.

-

Lilith remembers her first time with Eve. She remembers watching the sun set and dragging Eve to the tops of her trees. She remembers her hands turning black with magic, remembers the ground solidifying beneath her feet, remembers the look on Eve’s face when she stared at Lilith in amazement.

_“What are you doing?”_

_“I am showing you, little rib.”_

Lilith remembers how light her voice was then, before the darkness soaked in to her bones and latched tiny teeth along her rib cage and refused to let go. She remembers how Eve said that her words carried her to some other place, a white island where the sand is too light to trace her steps, and no one knows what she did there. _Perhaps,_ Eve had said, _I’ll meet you there someday._

Eve is not Zelda.

Zelda makes deals in dark rooms. Zelda pays for palms to be cut open for sacrifice. Zelda, who is reckless and purposeful all at once. Zelda is the storm on the edge of the horizon, lightning flickering in the distance, illuminated under her skin as her magic shifts and seethes like the ocean.

 _Do you miss the garden?_ Samael had asked her once, many times. Some when they were so intertwined that Lilith forgot where she began and ended. _Do you miss the garden, oh mother of demons?_

 _I don’t_ she had responded. She doesn’t. She doesn’t miss Eden and the constant reminder of Adam’s harsh presence and brutal hands. She thrives in these modern times, these overwhelming, dizzying cities that sprawl for ages across the sands.

(what Lilith doesn’t understand is that she replaced the garden with one made of steel and smoke, the maze of flowers that Eve would lead her through became a tangled spiders-web of city streets, loud and noisy and unnamable)

-

Lilith hates herself for leaving Eve behind. For not having enough time, enough strength. She should have carried her in her arms. She should have taken her high on the hill above the garden after they ate the pomegranate together and found a place to honour her, away from the horrors, away from everything that had doomed them.

Of course there had been no time. Of course she’d had to race from the city to outlive it herself.

If she had taken Eve where would they be now? Cairo? Shanghai? Tokyo? Where she had followed Zelda to from balcony to balcony, would she follow Eve?

It’s a broken Lilith that first steps into the Spellman Mortuary wearing the skin of Mary Wardwell. She thought it might feel reminiscent of a homecoming, but it is another mask, another facade, another lie, another place she doesn’t quite belong.

The woman looks up, and Lilith sees that her eyes are the same in her memory, her face only slightly aged, but all of her harder, more intense. Was Zelda always this woman of stone, this insurmountable wall? Zelda stares at her as if she expects something from her, and Lilith cannot imagine now what she ever thought she had to offer.

Zelda only ever knew her as Eve, never Lilith.

“ _Zelda_ ,” she whispers.

Zelda stares at Lilith as if she is a ghost. For the first time since she walked away from Eden and left Eve in the garden, she thinks someone is finally seeing the truth.

-

“I’m sorry I’m not Eve,” was the first thing Zelda says after Lilith tells her the truth.

 _You don’t have to be,_ she wants to scream, to tear off her own skin and claim Zelda again and again and again until Zelda realises how not like Eve she is. _You’re nothing like Eve and I’m not the same Lilith who fell in love with her._

Lilith just presses her lips to Zelda’s and swallows all the guilt that tastes like betrayal.

-

A mist rolls across the forest, obscuring the stars. She doesn’t know what it is that wakes her, her dreams dim and grey and riddled with monotonous suffering, but when she opens her eyes there is the outline of a figure standing outside the door of Mary Wardwell’s cottage. She sits up on the couch, squinting in the darkness, urging her magic to open the door. Someone kneels next to her, a hand grasping her palm.

Zelda takes Lilith’s fingers and wraps them around her own throat.

“Take me,” she whispers, and presses down.

Lilith hesitates, suddenly so aware of the other woman whose face is now near to her own, her breath, her scent. Zelda smelled the same as she did so long ago on a balcony in Paris: cloves and nicotine and death.

She inhales. Zelda’s lips brush her mouth. Earth, she realises. Zelda smells like the earth in the garden.

“Zelda…”

“Shut up.”

Zelda straddles her, the heat pressed into Lilith’s chest, nails dig forming tiny crescent moons in her shoulder. “Yes.” Zelda says. “Now.” It is an instruction, said with all the authority of the woman who ran an entire coven.

Lilith obeys. They fuck quickly, almost silently, against the wall in the cottage. It is rough, tense, every motion taut and overly physical as if she is trying to force the pain out of herself, as if this is a ritual meant to cleanse them both of everything they’ve lost. Zelda writhes against her, one leg wrapped around Lilith’s waist. Claws at her back to hold herself in place. When she finishes, she collapses slightly in Lilith’s arms, panting, trembling, then slips out from under her, stepping away. Leaves the cottage, closing the front door back into place as if nothing has happened.

When Lilith falls into bed later, she feels blood running down her spin. In the morning, there are dark streaks where she’s slept, from the gouges Zelda made into her flesh.

They do not speak again. There is a faint bruise forming around Zelda’s neck in the morning, easily visible when she stands at the table next to Hilda and the rest of Sabrina’s friends, discussing how to trap the Dark Lord. Lilith looks at her across the room, stands and waits to see if she will make eye contact. Zelda glances up only once, giving away nothing, and then returns to the conversation. Lilith licks some of what remains of the other woman from the corner of her mouth, and then walks down to Hell.

-

They trap Lucifer, bind him in Nicholas Scratch. She can feel Samael’s eyes on her as she descends with the boy in her arms. There will be heaven to pay later when he realises she released Mary Wardwell from his care and back into the realm of mortals.

For now, she breathes in the scent of emptiness, waiting for the thrill of victory to race through her, shaking her to her core. The crown on her head feels heavy and she can only think of how _incomplete_ it feels without Eve standing at her side.

_Don’t stop. Lilit, please._

Lilith is a queen now, self-crowned but a queen all the same. The plague kings bowed to her once, they will do so again. Monarchs must be wise, cunning, clever all the same. They must be cold and vast and unforgiving.

 _Does the mountain bow to the sea, Lilith?_ Eve had asked her once. _It does not, but the sea can swallow the mountain. So you shouldn’t bow to that mountain of a man, you should swallow him._

Hell closes behind her, trapping her from the mortal world and Lilith descends into the depths, ready to swallow the man in her arms until the mountain is no more.

She learned to wear strength and darkness equally well, half wisdom, half war.

She missed Eve.

-

Mary Wardwell opened her eyes, she could feel something watching her, something ancient and untamed. She couldn’t name the power she felt, but she knew it was old, older than time.

“I see you’re finally awake, little one,” a woman’s voice said. “I apologise for what my lover did to you. She truly didn’t mean any of it.” The woman stepped forward, into the flickering light of the fire. Her hair was long and black and when it moved it shone like the night sky. Her eyes were a brown so dark they looked almost black.

“You can call me Eve.”

-

“There’s a grief in my dreams now,” Mary says, accepting the cup of tea Eve hands her. “There’s a certain kind of sadness that tastes so much like hope on my tongue and I cannot wash it down with the strongest of liquors.” Eve doesn’t say anything, just looks at Mary with hard eyes and nods.

(Eve ignores how Mary’s eyes matched Lilith’s, ignores how the angles of their jaws are identical)

Mary sets down her tea cup and stares at Eve, her eyes harden and Eve can see strength behind the timid facade the schoolteacher emits. “Tell me the truth, from the beginning. If Lilith was inhabiting my body I want to know everything about her.”

Eve smiles, soft and sweet and the scent of lilies and irises and wet earth fills the room. “She was free and wild and kind,” she started. “I called her Lilit. She called me her _little rib creature_.”

-

_Praise Madam Satan._

Zelda Spellman’s voice echoed through her head. Lilith wondered how the witch was doing, their last meeting rushed and violent full of apologies and pain. She wonders if Zelda knew that she loved her, in her own tragic, broken way. Zelda was not Eve, but for a second, Zelda was _hers_.

 _I swear I will protect your coven_ , Lilith had said. _I will protect it because it is my own now._

Their twisted relationship, intertwined like tarot cards on a table. Zelda, the high priestess. Eve, the empress. And Lilith, Lilith was death.

Lilith takes a deep breath, ignoring the shaking in her hands as she hears Zelda’s words.

 _And what about me, Lilith?_ Zelda has asked. _Who will protect me?_

Lilith didn’t have an answer, not when she had tasted Zelda and found her lacking compared to Eve. Not when Zelda wanted to be a consort and Lilith craved a high priestess.

Zelda was not Eve, and only Eve could stand next to Lilith in hell as her equal.

Lilith continues to sit in hell on a gilded throne of lies, waiting, watching, hoping beyond belief that Eve is still out there.

She ate the pomegranate, she ate the fruit of the tree of life, the apple of the tree of knowledge. She became the same as _Lilith_ ** _._**

The same as _him_.

 _No,_ Eve had said. _We will never be anything like him_.

Lilith didn’t know if she was talking about the false god, about Lucifer, about Adam.

(Lilith didn’t care, they were all the same in the end)

-

In the end, Eve returns to her anyways.

Her little rib creature. Darker, harsher, harder.

Still Eve.

-

“You ate my son.”

There was nothing accusatory in the voice but it made Lilith freeze none the less. _You left me,_ she wanted to scream. _You told me you love me and then you left._ “I had no choice,” she states, not looking up from her work. “I was hungry. He was already dead.” There’s a sigh, soft, gentle as a breeze.

Eve finally, _finally_ , steps into her line of sight. She’s not the same as she was in the garden. She’s not the same as how Mary Wardwell had described her. Her hair is loose and wild, tumbling down her back, curling around her fingers. Her eyes shift colours ever second, green to grey to black, her magic coming to life beneath her skin. This Eve is harsher, soft curves withering away to the bones beneath. She stands with one hand on her hip, head cocked, the smirk on her face as friendly as a tornado, ripping through Lilith.

“Did he taste like me, _Lilit_?” Eve whispers. “When you sucked out Abel’s marrow did you wish it was mine?”

“ _Eve_.”

Eve stalks around the desk and Lilith remembers the time she followed a cougar through the woods outside the Spellman Mortuary. All of Eve’s movements are silent and calculated. “You’ve changed, Lilit.” Her eyes flicker from brown to gold, her magic reaching out and intertwining with Lilith’s. “You were carefree in the garden. Dark with Zelda. And now, now you’re wise and ruthless and wild.” Eve’s right in front of her now, and Lilith stares into her eyes, the same eyes she saw in the garden, curious and wild and untamed. “I think I like this you the best. This you smells like rot and gin and incense, blood and salt and sweat. You’ve fought for something, Lilit. You fought for something and you won.” Eve’s hair looks soft and Lilith yearns to run her fingers through it like she did back in the garden, in warm desert days beneath a blistering sun with sweat cooling on their skin.

Finally, _finally_ Eve kisses her and to Lilith it tastes like coming home.

-

“I’ve spoken to Mary,” Eve says later, when they’re lying naked and intertwined on the bed. Lilith soaks her all in, there’s scars there, new and old and unfamiliar. “I told her the truth.”

Lilith sucks back a breath. “I’m sorry for what I did to her. She was kind, and gentle, she did not deserve it.”

Eve looks up at her, eyes wide and burning. “She wants to meet you.”

Lilith pauses, lets the words sink in, passes them by in a second. “When did you get this?” She points to ink between Eve’s breasts, a pomegranate, as bright and juicy as the ones in the garden tattooed permanently on her skin.

Eve laughs, and Lilith is transported back to the garden. “After Adam abandoned me, after we found Abel’s bones, cracked and sucked dry. After Adam called you a monster and beat me for defending you. After he walked away. I wandered and saw so much, Lilit. I saw metal cities full of metal beasts rise and fall like waves.” She takes a breath and Lilith falls _that_ much more in love. “I realised something during those times. I realised that there was a woman with eyes as blue as the sky and hair as black as night who told me that if I ate the fruit I would be free. I realised that I had given my soul already, so I tattooed her here.” Eve took Lilith’s hands and placed them over the pomegranate. “Right here, where my heart has always belonged to her.”

Lilith’s breath stutters. “I’m not the same, little rib. I’ve changed. The world changed me. Lucifer changed me.”

_Losing you changed me._

The laugh Eve emits is broken, harsh, jagged. “And I haven’t? You ate my son. You left his bones where I could find them. I was beaten and bruised beyond recognition and you have the audacity to tell me that you’ve changed. We’ve both changed, Lilith. But my heart has always belonged to you. I’m yours.”

Eve’s lips find hers and they’re possessive and harsh and unforgiving. “And you’re mine,” she snarls.

There’s teeth chasing Lilith’s pulse down her neck, shoulders, breasts. They nip and bite and Lilith is writhing beneath Eve’s touch. “Yours,” she gasps out, grabbing Eve’s hair and pushing her down, down, down. “I’m yours, I was always yours.” Eve smirks against her thigh and then grabs her legs and spreads them.

“As am I,” Eve whispers, delicately running her fingers over Lilith’s cunt, impossibly tender, impossibly gentle. Eve leans in and takes a languid lick and Lilith falls slack, remembering pomegranate juice and impossible kisses and midnights in a garden of good and evil. “Forever and always, _Lilit_ , I am forever and always yours.”

-

Mary Wardwell is not as timid as Lilith first thought she was, as she rubbed her jaw, feeling the bruise blossom beneath the surface. She moves her jaw, feeling it click as it pops back into place. “For a timid schoolteacher you have a mean right hook.”

Mary’s eyes soften as she hands Lilith an ice pack. “My father taught me how to punch by accident.”

Lilith raises an eyebrow. “By accident.” Mary shrugs her shoulders.

“Make a fist. Don’t tuck your thumb in. First two knuckles slightly out so you strike with them and don’t break any fingers. I’m sorry for hitting you, I thought I would react better.”

“I did steal your skin and masquerade as you.”

Mary blinks at her, bright blue eyes so much like Lilith’s wide behind her glasses. She smiles, soft and gentle and runs her fingers over the bruise on Lilith’s cheek. “Eve told me so much about you,” she whispered. “She said you were gentle and hard all at once. She said she loves you.”

“And what do you think?”

Mary’s eyes darken, “I think I would like to find out more.”

-

Eve craved equality. Zelda craved power. Mary Wardwell didn’t crave either. She would pour Lilith mugs of tea and set out delicate almond cookies and listen to her stories in loose robes that fell off her shoulders with a notebook on her lap and hair up in a messy bun, pen never stopping.

Mary craved knowledge.

Lilith told her stories. Stories of the garden and Eve, Cain and Abel. How she walked among the Greeks and watched as they built temples to their deities, coating the marble in wine and blood and fear.

Eve came with her sometimes, perching on the armrest of Lilith’s chair as she talked with Mary.

(sometimes Eve would bend down and suck on Lilith’s neck, causing her to pause and moan and Mary, Mary’s eyes would become impossible dark and she’d excuse herself for the evening)

 _You’re teasing her_ , Lilith would whisper to Eve later, when it was the two of them together in soaked in sweat and sex and sin. _It’s unfair to her._

 _Can’t you see it,_ Eve would throw back her long hair and laugh, tracing a nipple with her finger, making it impossible tight, before capturing it with her mouth. _She wants you, Lilit. You have knowledge that she craves, give her what she wants._ She climbs up Lilith’s body. _She craves the feel of your skin as much as she craves your knowledge._ And Eve is above her, one hand in Lilith’s hair with mirth in her eyes. _I hope you want a feast, demoness,_ she whispers, lowering herself onto Lilith’s waiting mouth.

Rib always one of Lilith’s favourite tastes.

-

She goes by herself the next time she visits Mary, Eve begs her to come with, teases her with a hand between her own legs.

Lilith declines.

This is something she has to do on her own.

Mary answers the door to her cottage, soft smile and gentle hands. “What was Cairo like?” Lilith laughs and laughs and _laughs_. Mary Wardwell is curious about everything and not shy in her passions.

“Cairo was sandy,” she responds, and Mary nods eagerly. “I have a question for you now.”

“Anything, everything.” Mary moves out of the way and Lilith steps inside the cottage she lived in for months. “Whatever you need.”

“What do you want?”

Mary freezes, only for a second, and if Lilith wasn’t watching her intently she would have missed it. “What do you mean?”

Lilith steps forward, and another step, and another. She reaches out, fingers ghosting over Mary’s jaw. “If it’s no mind to you, I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

Mary’s breath stutters, staggers in her throat. “But Eve.”

“Is as enamoured with you as I am. You are more powerful than you look, Mary Wardwell.”

And Mary broke, the same passion that struck Lilith’s jaw advanced on her, sleek and deadly, a cobra primed to strike.

The schoolteacher shared her jaw, her eyes, but as Lilith tasted Mary she realised something that was different than Zelda.

Mary Wardwell, she realised, tasted like Eve.

-

“Have you come to be rid of me?” Lucifer raised his head and stared at her from Faustus Blackwoods body, eyes narrowed. Lilith stared back, Eve at her side.

 _He put me under a Caligari spell,_ Zelda had said, eyes turning dark, hard, sad. _I remember every single day of it, every second I was under his control._ Lilith knew how that felt, how to have every single movement out of her power, her struggle to get free no matter the cost of her soul.

“You wouldn’t kill Blackwood, would you?” The grin was all teeth, baring everything but warmth.

“You have no clue what I am capable of,” Lilith snarls, stepping forward. She feels Eve’s magic reaching out, mixing with her own, smells the garden in the back of her mind. “It’s been so very long since I’ve feasted, I’m famished.”

She’s never seen fear on Blackwood’s face before, it’s a look she wished that she saw more often as she stepped forward. “You have been weighed, _my Lord_ , you’ve been found wanting.”

Angels blood is black, and Lilith feels as if she’s staring into a singularity as it puddles on the floor. Lucifer is choking on his own blood, drowning as it fills his lungs. Lilith kneels down in front of him, tucking two fingers beneath his chin and pointing his face up to hers. There’s blood on her teeth, dripping down her chin and staining her dress. She spits a wad of muscle out, it lands on the floor next to him with a wet splat. “When will you learn that I’ve tasted blood and I want more?”

Lucifer dies in her arms, the same way she healed him oh so long ago when she walked into the wasteland outside the garden. Eve’s hands are on her shoulders, rubbing soothing circles as Lilith unhinges her jaw and begins to feast.

-

It’s Prudence Night and Ambrose Spellman that stumble into hell before Zelda ever shows her face. They’re bruised and bloody and Prudence has swords in her hands.

“Where is he?” She spits out. “Where is my father?”

Eve raises an eyebrow at Lilith, as if to say _this is Blackwoods spawn? She has so much fight_ , and Lilith internally lets out a long sigh.

“He’s dead, Prudence,” she states. “Him and Lucifer have fallen.” Ambrose takes a step back, eyes wide, and Lilith bares her fangs. “He was so delicious.”

Prudence lowers her swords and stares Lilith in the eye, full of defiance and pride and never-ending strength. “Good,” she says at last. “He was a terrible father.”

-

Mary is pulling out a batch of almond cookies when Lilith senses the change, Eve does too. A wave of power so heavy washes over them both that Lilith forgets to breathe for a second. Eve looks at her, eyes wide and hesitant. Then Lilith takes a breath and smells nicotine and death and cloves. She relaxes in her seat, letting the magic wash over her.

(Zelda Spellman always had an intoxicating taste)

“Mary,” Lilith says, softly. “We’re going to have a guest.”

Mary looks up from the counter and nods silently. She’s used to visitors, used to the hidden creatures that show up at her doorstep following Lilith. She’s seen elk with vines wrapped around their antlers kneel before the goddess, watched as creatures from myths bow before her, offering tribute.

There’s three sharp knocks on the door and Lilith stands up, a shadow in motion from the chair to the door.

“How can I help you, Zelda?”

Zelda’s eyes flicker around the room, between Eve and Mary before finally landing on Lilith. “Is it true? What Prudence said, is it true the Dark Lord is dead? That Faustus is dead?”

Lilith smiles, all sharp white teeth and no remorse. She remembers the taste of angels blood, of the feeling of life draining out beneath her hands. “It’s true, my high priestess. He was delicious.”

-

Zelda accepts the cup of tea from Mary and stares across the room at Eve. “You’re her, aren’t you? You’re Eve?” Eve laughs, light and joyful.

“I’m Eve.”

Lilith wonders what is going through Zelda’s head. This is Eve, the _Eve_ that Lilith missed so terribly. Eve who was nothing like the photos Lilith has seen in the Satanic Bible. Her Eve has eyes that shift with her magic, skin the colour of the rich earth of the garden, and hair as black as night. Zelda’s lips part and there’s a quiet, minuscule, puff of air that flows between them. Mary moves to stand next to Lilith, eyes flickering between Zelda and Eve before resting on Lilith’s. “What’s going on?” She whispers in Lilith’s ear.

“They’re sizing each other up,” Lilith responds. “You, little one, are so much like Eve. You crave knowledge and equality and have compassion for others. Zelda…” Lilith trails off, remember blood running down her back and teeth in her shoulder and pain mixed with pleasure. “Zelda craves power, she’s fiercely loyal to those she cares about but she’ll protect her own first.”

“Two sides of the same coin,” Mary’s comment is so soft Lilith strains to hear it over the noises of the cottage.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Zelda looks down at her tea. “We were taught that Eve was submissive, was fragile, needed the false gods love to become whole. We were told she was ethereal and ghostly, that she was powerless.”

Eve smirks, “You were taught wrong. It was not the false gods love I needed, it was my own. Come, witchling, I will show you true power.” Eve stands and holds out a hand to Zelda, her eyes flickering from gold to bronze to silver. “There is so much you do not know about this world, high priestess. If you are expected to lead a Coven, you should learn.”

-

Mary walks next to Lilith in the woods, Lilith remembers wearing her skin, remembers the skin tight dresses, remembers her face. She remembers waking up and staring into the same blue eyes that Eve loved so much. She remembers who she was with Zelda, with dark hair and sharp angles. She remembers who she was with Eve, back in the garden, when she was so joyous and carefree from anything that could hold her back.

(remembers walking into Hell after weeks in the bright, bright sun and watching the colour fade from her skin, she remembers wearing the darkness as a gown around her)

Zelda and Eve walk side by side, heads pressed together as they whisper in ancient languages. Lilith strains to pick up the Latin that passes through their lips, aches as they switch to Greek, to Arabic, to Hebrew.

“I’ll take it that the Spellman’s are all witches?” Mary asks, breaking the silence between them. Lilith nods, watching the small trail of greenery that Eve leaves behind her, mosses uncurling, reaching for the sun.

“They’re old magic, powerful magic,” Lilith says. “Zelda.” She pauses and takes a deep breath, remembering how Zelda tasted on her tongue, how primal she was, how _unlike_ Eve. Zelda was a storm to match her rage, and Eve was the cool summers rain that put out all of her fires. “Zelda is powerful, very powerful. The second she realises that is the second that there will be an uprising in Hell.”

“And what about you?” Mary’s timid blue gaze stares up at her and Lilith forgot how short the mortal was.

“What about me?”

“Are you happy? In Hell?”

Lilith stumbled over her feet, taken aback at the question. Was she happy? “I don’t know, Mary. There are days where I’m thrilled to finally have the thrown, the crown. They were promised to me and I earned them time and time again. But there are days where I miss the freedom of wandering the landscapes, the ability to move from one place to another.”

“They say every monarch had a consort,” Mary states. “And you have two vying for your attention. Zelda would be rash, fighting with her heart over her head, and Eve would ground you.”

“And what about you?”

Mary gasps. “What about me?”

Lilith grins. “Oh, come on little one. I know you’ve thought about it. Hell has the grandest libraries for you to pour over. Manuscripts in languages so old the earth has forgotten their names, so dead they too have returned to dust. You crave knowledge like Eve craves equality and Zelda craves power. You would make a fair consort too, strategy and calculations. You’d be ruthless around my war table. But hell is not suited for the likes of you.” Mary’s response was silence.

-

Lilith’s hands were black in Mary’s, teaching her old phrases she learned in the garden about hope and vitality. Eve and Zelda had vanished into the forest, plants sprouting wherever Eve touched, Zelda looking at the petals with awe.

“Ad astra, ave victories, ad meliora,” Lilith told Mary. “Remember those and help will always find you.”

Mary nods, eyes solemn. “What do they mean?”

“To the stars,” Eve said, walking out from between the trees with Zelda behind her, arms full of herbs. “To victory. To better things.” She gestures to Lilith. “Come here, my love. Zelda knows secrets in this forest I think you will adore.” Her eyes flickered, black to gold. “I will stay with Mary.”

-

“I see why you care for her so,” Zelda says, there’s earth on her dress as she kneels in the dirt and Lilith has never seen her like this. Her face free of makeup and her hair pulled back. She looks so different than Eve, different than Mary, and Lilith cannot explain the draw the witch has on her. “Eve. She’s…” her voice trails off and Lilith wonders what Eve told her of the garden. “She’s been around as long as you have. And yet, you chose me. Why did you choose me?” She plucks an orchard from the ground and vanishes it with a flick of her wrist, to Hilda no doubt.

“You have power,” Lilith says quietly. “Eve has equality, Mary has knowledge, and you have power. You’re so unlike each other, and I am so unlike myself.” Zelda raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t care if you’re the Queen of England, let along the Queen of Hell,” she states. “I want to know why you chose me. I want to know why you chose me and lied to me and then walked into my life as someone else. I want to know why you left.”

“I left because I had to.”

Zelda pushes her backwards. “That’s not good enough.” She makes to push her again and Lilith grabs her hands.

“You are a storm, Zelda Spellman,” she hisses. “You are fight and fury and unbridled rage. You’re loyal to a fault and you’re so powerful, I wish you could see how powerful you truly are. I chose you because I wanted you. You’re not Eve, nothing close, but you’re Zelda and I fell in love with you none the less.” She lets go of Zelda’s wrists. “I fell in love with you none the less.”

Zelda stumbles backwards.

“My magic,” Lilith raises her eyes and stares at the witch. “My magic isn’t like your magic. It’s like Eve’s, it’s as ever-changing as the tides. You’ve seen how her eyes changed black to gold to grey.” Zelda nods. “Mine changes my appearance, my personality. My magic is an embodiment of my soul, of myself. Eve’s magic balances that, she grounds me. I love her for that. I love you for your storm, your chaos and lightning. Eve isn’t a storm, Zelda, you are.” Lilith breathes those last words out. “You were baptised with blood in your hands with your feet on the ground. You deserve to be baptised with the moon as your guide and stars in your hair.”

Zelda moves fast, faster than Lilith can see. There’s hands fisted in her hair and her back is against the tree and one of Zelda’s thighs is between Lilith’s legs and her lips are so unbelievably soft against Lilith’s.

“I need you up here, Zelda. I need you up here as my high priestess, to spread the word of the fall of the Dark Lord, the reign of Lilith has begun.”

-

Eve finds her out in the woods that night. “You love her.” Lilith nods in response. “You chose well for a high priestess, she’s full of fire.” Arms wrap around Lilith’s waist and Eve’s head rests on her shoulders. “I can see the way you look at her, the way you look at Mary. The way you look at me. You need to choose soon, Lilit. This cannot go on forever.”

Lilith closes her eyes. “I don’t want to choose, Eve. I want Zelda and Mary and you.”

Eve laughs and presses a open mouth kisses down Lilith’s neck. “My goddess, my queen.” The arms around her waist disappears. Lilith opens her eyes and looks down at Eve. “Let me worship you, my love.” There’s a wave of Eve’s wrist and Lilith’s dress vanishes into the night. Soft kisses trail from her knees up her thighs. “Let me lay you down, oh goddess. Let me show you my devotion.”

In Hell, Lilith was life. In the mortal realms, she was death. Laid bare before Eve beneath the Orion arm, Lilith felt empty at whole all at once. Eve’s tongue was persistent between her legs, her eyes molten gold, her hands digging into the flesh of Lilith’s ass as she feasted.

There were noises in the air, animalistic, and it took Lilith a second to realise they were coming from herself.

Before Zelda, Lilith was power. Before Mary, Lilith was knowledge.

Before Eve…

Before Eve she was an equal, a creature from the beginning of time who had seen cities rise before her, then behind her sink again.

“You,” Lilith fists her hands into Eve’s hair and pulls her impossibly closer to her cunt. “I choose you as my consort.”

-

“You need an escape,” Eve states in bed one night. Her nails and lips are painted gold to match her eyes. “Go visit your high priestess. Go visit Mary. Hell won’t fall apart in a day, my love.”

Lilith sighs, letting her hand fall over her eyes. “I don’t want to abandon you down here.”

Eve laughs, “You chose me for your consort, darling one, but I also accepted the responsibilities that come with it. You will never be happy trapped down in Hell with me. Right now you need fire and stability. Go, probe Mary’s mind for answers about the Plague Kings. Go feed off of Zelda’s fire, walk among your Coven, remind them that you are their goddess. Spread your wings and fly.”

Lilith knew that Eve was right. “I’ll go tomorrow, my little rib creature.”

Eve grins, capturing Lilith’s lips, nibbling on her collarbone, leaving golden marks down her chest. “And call me, my love, call me when we can get a shot of stardust so we can immunise ourselves against the end of the world.”

There’s lips on her cunt and a tongue as clever and wicked as a serpent tracing glyphs on her thighs.

(Eve swallows wave after wave after wave, to her, Lilith will always taste like the pomegranate, to her, Lilith is the tree of life)

-

Mary is used to Lilith walking into her cottage unannounced, used to the goddess pushing her up against the nearest surface and falling to her knees before her.

(Mary thought she understood worship, but with Lilith between her thighs, between her sheets, she realised that worship was never going to a church)

She’s used to watching Lilith walk around her cottage wearing nothing but a silk robe with a tumbler of whiskey in her hand muttering spells under her breath, magic filling her veins, turning them black. She’s used to Zelda coming over, practicing incantations next to Lilith in her garden, watching her plants grow.

She’s always been alone, for so long, and now there’s bodies in her bed, women in her head, and Mary grows addicted to Zelda’s taste and Lilith’s lips and Eve’s laugh.

Mary grows accustomed to Lilith settling between her legs and Zelda above her mouth, she loses herself in them, all of them. She learns to wake up in a tangle of limbs and hair with sweat cooling on her skin and the smell of sex permeating the air; she grows accustomed to Lilith climbing out of bed and standing in the garden, bare, her hand on the head of a deer, an owl on her shoulder.

(Mary grows accustomed to being haunted by a lonely god and her high priestess)

Eve visits as well, fewer than Lilith, but visits all the same. There’s seconds where Mary sees the black eyes of the Eve she met, before they flicker back to the bright gold of Lilith’s Eve.

(she likes Lilith’s Eve more, Eve with golden eyes and golden lips and gold at every scar covering her body making her look like a piece of art that belongs in a museum)

Zelda visits her always, sitting down with her as she plans for Black Mass, studies for the courses at the Academy of Unseen Arts. Asking her questions about phrasing and history, about witches and warlocks and how _exactly should I phrase this Mary_?

And Mary?

Mary becomes accustomed to witches and goddesses and creatures as old as time wandering through her doors, sharing her life, sharing her bed.

 _Tell me a secret,_ Lilith asked her once. _Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else. Tell me something honest._

Mary had stared into Lilith’s eyes, so so _so_ similar to her own. _I’ve learned many things while walking in the woods,_ she had said. _But for all those things I learned walking in the woods, none was as important as how much I fell in love with you._

Lilith’s eyes crinkle at the corners, the angles in her face softening. Her hands come up to cup Mary’s cheeks, impossibly soft, impossibly tender, impossibly warm. Her lips are gentle and Mary expected many things from the goddess of death when she started sharing a bed, but she never expected kindness.

-

“Goddess,” Minion stands at the entrance of the throne room. “Zelda Spellman here to see you.” Lilith looks up from the war table, crown on her head and Eve next to her. Lilith nods and the witch walks in.

“Goddess,” Zelda kneels before her. Lilith dips her head in return.

“Empress.”

Eve grins. “ _Witchling_. What news do you bring of the mortal world?”

“Life is glorious and wretched at the same time,” Zelda responds. “The mortals live, the mortals die. My niece continues to be insufferable.”

“Saviour and superiority complex appease Sabrina,” Lilith whispers in Eve’s ear. “My high priestess, you look exhausted,” she says, louder. “Come, retire with me. Tell me of my Coven.”

-

Lilith would never tire of Zelda’s taste, will never tire of her softness in her mouth. Never tire of how much her jaw would ache afterwards, how air became a struggle, how Zelda would whine and beg and writhe beneath her.

She would never tire of watching Zelda and Eve together. How Eve’s hair would fall over Zelda’s face, how Zelda would tangle her fingers in it, tugging Eve closer to her. How Eve would whisper _witchling_ as she buries three fingers inside of Zelda, how Zelda’s back would arch and moan and snap back into place.

(Lilith remembers when all she could see when she looked at Zelda was how unlike Eve she was, now all she sees is _Zelda_ )

“Goddess.”

Zelda’s walking towards her, hips swaying to some rhythmic beat that was more intuition than music, and Lilith’s heart stops, her breath freezing in her throat. She couldn’t think back to a time when she compared Zelda to Eve, when she compared soft earth to harsh fire.

Lilith remembers _I’m sorry I’m not Eve_. She remembers wanting to scream _You don’t have to_ be, remembers wanting to tear off her own skin and claim Zelda again and again and again until Zelda realises how not like Eve she is. _You’re nothing like Eve and I’m not the same Lilith who fell in love with her._ She remembers pressing her lips to Zelda’s and swallowing all the guilt that tastes like betrayal.

“Priestess.”

Zelda stops before her and holds out her hand. “Do you trust me?”

 _Do you trust me?_ Samael had asked.

 _Do you trust me?_ Lucifer has asked.

“Do you trust me?” Zelda asks again, hand out, palm up.

Lilith takes it, watching her high priestess pull her closer. “Yes. **Yes**. A thousand times, _yes_.” Zelda kneels before her, running her hands up Lilith’s calves, spreading her legs.

“My goddess,” she presses soft, open mouth kisses on the skin there. “My deity. My light.” Lilith tilts her head back, feeling Eve’s hand raking her hair back, Eve’s hungry lips finding hers. Her robes is untied by deft fingers and Lilith is unsure which of them did it. Fingers trace glyphs on her thighs and Zelda’s mouth follows them. Eve’s hands push the robe off of Lilith’s shoulders, fingers digging into knots carved into her shoulders, teeth breaking the skin on her neck. Lilith lets her head fall back and she lets out an animalistic moan.

Eve’s fingers find the tie on her dress while Zelda pushes it up so it bunches around her waist. There’s a tongue on her cunt and a mouth on her breast and Lilith closes her eyes wondering if this is what true worship was, if this is what heaven felt like.

-

“We need to talk about Mary, my love,” Eve says later. Lilith raises her head from Zelda’s chest and glares at her lover.

“Can it wait, little rib?”

Zelda lets out a soft mewl and buries further into Lilith’s shoulder, she looks pointedly at Eve. Eve sighs and relents, watching Lilith curl her head further into Zelda. Those bright blue eyes pierce her and Eve accepts the invitation, pressing her face into the curve of Lilith’s neck, wrapping her arms around Zelda’s waist. This mess, this chaotic beautiful mess of a relationship.

This was theirs.

-

“Do you trust me?” Lilith asked, holding out her hand. Mary looks up at her, the pool behind her, Eve and Zelda standing at her side. She nods, gentle, short, complete.

“Yes, Lilith. A thousand times, **_yes_**.”

“In the Church of Night,” Zelda starts, “We were baptised under a full moon, with blood on our palms anddirt between our toes.”  
“In the Church of Lilith,” Eve states, “Witches our baptised with the moon as their guide, with stars in their hair and the ground far beneath their feet.”

“You,” Lilith finishes, reaching forward and cupping Mary’s jaw. “You will not be baptised, darling one. My strategist. You will be reborn, only if you would like.”

Mary glances at the pool, then back to the trio before her. “What is it like, to live forever?”

“Oh,” Eve says, “So many things, dearest.”

Mary looks up at Lilith with the same eyes Lilith sees in the mirror. Mary is not Eve is not Zelda. Mary is her star, the northern most point in the sky which she knows will always lead her home. Mary, with hope and faith and purpose in her life. Mary who walks forward with renewal, with spirituality that Lilith envies. Zelda was her high priestess, Eve her empress, but Mary…

Mary was the lighthouse in the thickest of fog, always guiding her safely home.

She nods in confirmation once more and Lilith pulls her forward, into the pool. Eve sheds her clothes like a second skin and steps in afterwards, Zelda close behind. They’re so intertwined Lilith loses track of whose skin she finds, whose mouth is on hers, who caresses her softly, gently, carefree.

Her hands find Mary’s shoulders, Zelda’s and Eve’s soon follow. She pushes Mary down, down beneath the waves their bodies send across the surface of the pool.

Mary’s head breaks the surface seconds or minutes or an eternity later.

“How do you feel?” Lilith asks.

Mary pulls the bun out of her hair, letting it fall down her back wild and free. She let’s out a ring of laughter, filling the small cave they sit in.

“Alive, Lilith. I feel alive.”

-

_“Do you miss it?”_

_Lilith twisted in Samael’s arms. ´Miss what?”_

_“The garden?”_

_Lilith stiffened and then forced herself to relax. She remembers the garden, the lush greenery filled with curios and wonders, she remembers the sweetness of the fruit and the wind on her face. She remembers Adam and his kindness, at first, and then anger later._

_She remembers Eve._

_“I don’t.”_

Lilith replays that over and over and over and _over._

_Do you miss it?_

She did.

-

On Earth, Lilith was death. She was the shadows she walked between, the new moon in the sky when the woods were full of creatures kneeling before her. She wore a gown of moonlight and a crown of bones.

In Hell, Lilith was life.

Before Zelda, before Mary…

Before Eve…

Before Eve, Lilith was home.

-

_Do you trust me?_

_Yes, yes,_ **_yes,_ ** _a thousand times_ **_yes_ ** _._

-

Eve’s curled around her in bed when she wakes, breathing soft and even. There’s a warm spot next to her where Mary used to be, and if she strains, she can hear hushed conversation between Zelda and Mary downstairs, in the kitchen. Lilith rolls over, buries her face into Eve’s soft hair and takes a deep breath. He’s gone, Lucifer is gone, Samael kneels before her, before _them_. Hell is _theirs_.

(all this time Lilith knew she would never be happy sitting on a lonely throne, being another lonely god. all this time Lilith never had a home and she found one here, surrounded by her lovers, her friends, her _family_ )

For a brief moment, as sudden as a singularity, Lilith realised few simple truths:

The blood she shared with these woman was thicker than any bond she had with Lucifer, with Samael, with Adam.

All good things must end, but great things, those last _forever_.

-

It’s a silent and hushed _goddess_ that emits from Zelda’s lips and Lilith is drowning in her sweetness. Zelda’s hand comes down and tangles in her hair, threading her fingers through the dark strands.

“Easy _Lilit_ , best not forget yourself,” emanates from between her eyes where Eve rests, “I’m sure the witchling will be very upset if you do not finish the job she’s assigned to you.” Lilith’s eyes roll back in her head the second Eve’s tongue touches her cunt, doing wicked things between her folds, and she dives back into Zelda. There’s thighs tightening around her head and a flood on her tongue.

(Lilith wonders if this is how Noah felt when the false god arrived in front of him and told him to build an ark, Lilith wonders if this is her ark, between Zelda’s thighs)

She bursts onto Eve’s tongue, Zelda’s hand in her hair, Zelda’s cunt smeared across her face, and Lilith finally, _finally_ understands why mortals are addicted to supernovas.

-

The door to the cottage opens in front of her, and since she left the Spellman Household earlier that day, Lilith let’s out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. She aches with the loss of Eve and Zelda at her side.

(Zelda pushing her up against the wall in the foyer before she left, kneeling and raising one of Lilith’s legs over her shoulder and _I need to pay tribute to my goddess_ in that low, husky voice)

But there’s familiar blue eyes in front of her and, _hell below_ , her hair is down and she’s wearing nothing but a robe and her glasses with a steaming mug of coffee clutched between her hands and Liltih’s mind goes blank.

It’s been over thirty years since wore Mary Wardwell’s skin, slightly less than that when they laid her down in _aqua vitae_ , less then that since Mary altered between the mortal realm and Hell.

(Mary did adore Hell, this Lilith knew to be true, Mary loved stalking around the War Table, moving map markers with her hand, ordering the Plague Kings like a queen)

Mary pushes a stray wisp of hair out of her face and gives Lilith a soft, gentle smile. “Good morning, my goddess. You are a far way from you home, are you not?” She turns and walks inside, Lilith on her heels, the door slamming shut behind them. “I missed you, Lilith.”

Lilith takes the coffee from Mary’s hands and sets it on the counter behind her. “Mary,” she breathes, hands reaching up to cup Mary’s jaw. “Mary, Mary, _Mary_.” There’s a hissed intake of air and then Mary’s lips are on her and it’s been so long, _too long_ and Mary’s hands are in her hair and her lips are on Lilith’s neck and all Lilith can think about is Mary.

“I’m not far away from home,” Lilith finally makes out between frantic kisses and grasping hands. “I’m never far away from home if one of you are next to me.”

-

There was once a time that she compared them all to Eve. When she compared Zelda’s passion, as bright and burning as a flame, her questing hands so rough and gentle, that grasped and pulled with such convection, to Eve. Zelda was a storm, an aura of power, a beacon in the night calling her home over and over and over again, so that Lilith was stumbling towards her, drunk on her power, her beauty, her aura that filled the room with energy.

And she compared Mary, soft, dedicated Mary, who tasted to much like Eve, to Eve herself. Mary who stalked from room to room in Hell, dressed in a wisp of a gown, ordering the demons around in languages so ancient Lilith craved to know their origins.

(she always found their origins later, when she nestled between Mary’s thighs)

Mary was her general, her strategist, the mind in the shadows that worked and fiddled. Mary with her never ending hands and bright blue eyes who seemed to know everything and nothing at all, all at once.

And there was Eve. Eve who sat next to her at the beginning of time. Eve who whispered sweet nothings in her ears during the cold nights in the garden, Eve who ate the pomegranate and smeared the juices on their skin and bit her above her heart. Eve with scratches and scars and years of abusive filling her to the seams.

 _How do you stand it?_ Lilith asked her once. _Everything they have done to you, how are you still like this? This gentle. This kind._

Eve had laughed at her, thrown back her long hair and let the sun make her skin glow and laughed in the face of the false god. _It’s easy, my love, my Lilit. It’s easy for me to take all this pain, this suffering. Adam trained me to be nothing more than a vessel for man to use as they see fit, and you took my hands in yours and told me that I was destined for so much more than that. I refused to let it make me harsh, instead I let it make me kind._

Eve was kind and gentle and calmed Lilith’s rage. Zelda was her fire, her fuel to keep fighting, keep standing. Mary kept her on the right path, winning battles, winning wars, winning over her subjects.

Lilith opened her eyes to the dark of the cottage, to Mary’s soft snores. She pressed lips to a soft forehead and rose from the bed.

She had a Coven to attend to.

-

The Academy of Unseen Arts had seen better days. Lilith wandered the hallways as witches and warlocks passed her, many of them young, many of them afraid.

(many of them used to seeing Sabrina with white eyes, floating above missionaries with fire in her hands, many of them used to seeing Faustus take whatever he wanted with no repercussions)

Lilith wanted to stop them all, to take their hands in her and say, _no, I’m not like them, I’ll never be like them_. She didn’t, instead walking towards the chambers of the High Priestess, towards Zelda, towards _home_.

Zelda’s at her desk when Lilith enters.

“Nicholas Scratch,” she says, without looking up. “I don’t care what my niece has done this time, please, for the love of Lilith, ask someone else.”

“That’s interesting,” Lilith kicks off her heels and perches on the edge of Zelda’s desk. “You’ve never said you love me before.”

Zelda’s forehead creases before her eyes raise to look at Lilith. “You’re not Mr. Scratch.”

Lilith shrugs. “Kill your demons, eat their hands.” Zelda glares at her.

“Is there a reason you’re here?”

It’s here, on Zelda’s desk, that Lilith realises what she’s been missing for so long. She has a home now, a family, small and broken and bursting at the seams but they care for each other, they love each other. “The blood of the convent is thicker than the water of the womb,” Lilith says. “Is it not?” Zelda nods. “I’m here to visit my Coven, my church. The High Priestess here pays such dear devotion to me, such exquisite worship, I feel indebted to her. She gives me the highest praise, I must answer her call with clear adoration.” Lilith slides off the desk and between Zelda’s legs. “My high priestess, let me show you how much I crave your devotion, I honour your worship.” She slides Zelda’s dress up her thighs. “Just hope no one enters while I’m down here. I want to hear you scream my name.”

-

Zelda was not Eve. Mary was not Eve. Eve was not the Eve Lilith fell in love with in the garden, and Lilith had changed just as dramatically since her time spent beneath the trees.

Perhaps this is why she was always drawn to the woods outside of the Spellman Mortuary. There’s a precession behind her when she finally reaches the clearing in the centre of the woods. The clearing where Eve claimed her as her own.

(the clearing where she pulled Eve impossibly closer to her cunt and gasped out _you, I choose you as my consort_ )

There’s an elk with a snowy owl riding along on their antlers, a herd of deer with moss covering their pelts. There’s a creature, a jötunn from the far north with hands for antlers nestled between spriggans. There’s a gaggle of trolls next to the brook and a drake in the sky entangled in a complex dance with a phoenix.

Lilith watches them as she sheds her skin, trades the modern clothes she wears up here for her gown in hell, for a dress made of moonlight and shadows and death. There’s a crown made of bones on her head and a knife strapped to her thigh and Lilith breathes in the silence around her, the creatures all frozen, kneeling in front of her.

“You know I don’t like that dress, my love,” there’s arms around her waist and a voice as smooth as caramel in her ear, leaving a gentle nip before pulling away. There’s a smell in her nose of rot, of seaweed lying under the sun along the sand for too long. There was spiced rum and incense, blood and salt, rich damp earth and pine. Eve steps back and Lilith finally turns to face her.

There’s something insubstantial about Eve, as if the woman standing in front of her was just an illusion, as if there was something larger and darker shimmering behind the veil of normalcy, something that seethed and roiled like the storm on the horizon. Her eyes were golden, as were her lips. There were flecks of gold along her skin, shifting, changing, her magic come to life beneath her. “Is this how a goddess greets her consort, _Lilit_?”

“I am good to those who serve,” Lilith whispers, Eve’s breath hot on her ear despite the space between them. “And are you not a goddess, little rib creature? You’re from the garden, as am I.”

“Are you my consort then?” Eve grins, fierce and feral. “Life is good to those who serve.” She states. “Do you still serve, my love?”

“Yes,” Lilith whispers, her heart in her throat. Her blood was like fire in her veins, the dress far too tight, her skin too tight. “Yes, I still serve.”

“Then let life show you what becomes of those who serve.”

The kiss came suddenly, and did not come gently. Eve’s hand was on her jaw, demanding she open to her, and her tongue was hot and quick as she plunged into her mouth. There was an urgency there, and an almost violent sort of glee, but Lilith was hardly in the frame of mind to care. She ached, the years in the garden suddenly weighing desperately on her, and she clung to the goddess and accepted the force of her desire. She was giddy, drunk on passion and magic, and she barely took notice when it felt like there were too many hands, too many mouths, too much at once. Eve was not just a woman after all, not just human, her amorous attentions were hardly going to be unremarkable.

Eve’s gown was golden and bunched around her waist. “Who do you serve?” She snarled, as joyful as she was violent.

“You,” Lilith gasped, a plea and a prayer and unholy devotion all in one. “I serve you.”

When Lilith came, she dug her nails into Eve’s scalp fiercely enough to draw blood. She wanted to scream her devotion, but she did not remember how to breathe, how to draw oxygen into her lungs. It was fire rolling along every fibre of her body, sizzling and searing away all trace of Adam. She writhed and she sobbed, clinging and clawing and fighting to be free of it. Eve continued tracing glyphs on her cunt, unceasing as she teased with tongue and teach, wringing every last drop of pleasure from her.

“Eve,” Lilith breathes, barely there.

“ _Lilit_ ,” Eve’s face is above hers, hair falling in a curtain around Lilith’s face. “My love.”

Lilith reaches up to trace on delicate cheekbone. “What are you, my little rib?”

Eve smiles. “I’m from the beginning of time, _Lilit,_ just like you.”


End file.
